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Bruins Strike Back (Especially the Goalie)

Momentum is a funny thing. Everything can be going your way, until one of your replaceable defensive players lays a dirty hit on the other team’s postseason star, knocking both out for the playoffs. On paper, taking out the better player seems like it would tilt in the favor of the team doing the hitting. In practice, it leads to a 2-2 tie in the Stanley Cup Finals.

The Boston Bruins are apparently using every bit of emotion to hammer the Vancouver Canucks into submission ever since Aaron Rome laid out Nathan Horton in the first period of Game 3. Back then, in what seems like a different series entirely, the Canucks had a commanding 2-0 series lead, with the game score knotted 0-0. In the five periods of play after the hit—which saw both Horton (concussion) and Rome (suspension) removed from the series—Boston has outscored the Canucks 12-1. “Vancouver’s express ride to its first Stanley Cup has been derailed,” Damien Cox of the Toronto Star writes. “A joust between the Canucks and Boston Bruins that looked like a bit of a mismatch after two games is suddenly filled with texture and tension.”

Buried beneath the Horton/Rome drama and all the talk of momentum is a tale of two goalies going in very different directions. Roberto Luongo, after giving up his fourth goal of the game, was yanked from the contest and replaced with Cory Schneider. It was an eerie replay of his performance in the first round, when he gave up four goals on 12 shots to Chicago in Game 5 after allowing six goals in Game 4. “For the second time in this postseason,” Sports Illustrated’s Sarah Kwak writes. “Luongo has followed a disastrous game with another weak showing.” Sympathy for Luongo came from an unexpected place—Boston Globe writer Nancy Marrapese-Burrell. “Luongo wasn’t awful,” Marrapese-Burrell writes, “given that his defense struggled and pucks were being deflected.” She points to Sami Salo’s deflection of Michael Ryder’s goal in the second period as an example of Luongo’s bad night. “It was going high glove, and it dropped about three feet, so I don’t know what else I can say about that,” Luongo said. “I was out, I was challenging, I was ready and it just dropped.”

On the flip side of Luongo’s performance was another masterful game in goal by Boston’s Tim Thomas. In four games, he has allowed just four five goals. “Thomas has evolved as the most reliable component of the Cup finals,” ESPN’s Jackie MacMullan writes. “The sure thing, the redoubtable backstop, the player who has provided the Bruins with a decided edge.” And since the hit on Horton, Thomas has turned into a bit of an enforcer, first laying out Henrik Sedin in Game 3 and then fighting back against Alexandre Burrows in Game 4 after Burrows knocked Thomas’s stick out of his hands. Thomas hit Burrows with his stick, which led to a scrum in front of Boston’s goal. (Burrows has been Public Enemy No. 1 in Boston since the Bruins accused him of biting Patrice Bergeron’s fingers in Game 1, a charge Burrows denied.)

Thomas said after the game that Vancouver players continuously hit the butt end of his stick when they were getting close to the goalie. “I thought I would give him a love tap,” Thomas said, “to let him know I know what you’re doing, but I’m not going to let you do it forever.”

How big is Thomas’s stature growing in Boston? Bob Ryan and Chris Gasper of the Boston Globe actually debated the question of whether or not Thomas, as a goalie, is more important to his team than Tom Brady, a quarterback. Gasper went for Brady, but Ryan cast his lot with the hockey goalies, reasoning that a good defense and running game could make for a good football team. He points to Trent Dilfer as a quarterback who wasn’t a star, but could successfully manage the game. “You can’t manage the game in hockey,” Ryan reasons. “You’ve got to take those shots as they come.”

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The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Arizona Diamondbacks, 3-2, in the 12th inning Wednesday night on a walk-off home run from Andrew McCutchen. The winning pitcher was reliever Daniel McCutchen. It was the first time in MLB history—we’re assuming—that a game was won by a McCutchen and won by a McCutchen. More importantly for the Pirates, though, is that they are again playing .500 baseball, and a win today would put them over that mark for the first time this late in the season (which isn’t really that late) since 1999. The team hasn’t had a winning record for a full season since 1992. “Pittsburgh Pirates fans understand that this has been a long time coming,” Rum Bunter’s Tom Smith writes.

Still, the current 30-30 record sported by the Pirates isn’t exactly a cause for optimism among its entire fan base. “Who can forget the joy that spread across the region in 2005 when the Pirates beat Tampa Bay, 18-2, on June 11 to raise their record to 30-30?” the Post-Gazette’s Bob Smizik asks, before poking the figurative balloon with a needle. “Who can forget the despair that followed as the Pirates lost 15 of their next 19 on their way to 95 losses?”

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After months of guessing as to what this mystery project would entail for readers, Bill Simmons’s Grantland officially launched on Wednesday with a unique mixture of pop culture and sports content. Detailed charts and analysis on HBO’s tendency to recycle character actors found homes alongside a breakdown of LeBron James. In short, day one could be considered a success—the articles were solid (albeit really, really long), there was a wide mix of topics, and negative reaction—although it existed—was relatively hard to come by. Perhaps it is because Simmons, to his credit, seems content in making this a collaborative effort, not just the Bill Simmons show. “Writing is a fundamentally lonely thing. It’s just you and a blank Microsoft Word document. The process can drive people crazy. (And has.),” Simmons writes in his welcome letter. “It’s much more fun to create something with other people.”

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Not everything that pops up in the Daily Fix has to have rhyme or reason to it. Today, we’ve decided to celebrate semi-fictional, 19th century sports heroes. Like the one found on the Old Hoss Radbourn Twitter account. The real Radbourn played for four teams from 1881 to 1891, and had he shown a little more adeptness with his game, he could have been included in W.S. Kimball’s N184 collection. Spencer Hall of SB Nation rifles through the 1887 set and highlights some of the more out-there cards, like the creepy “Master Ray Perry, Champion Boy Boxer of America,” with Hall imagining what, exactly, earned these athletes their titles.

Comments (3 of 3)

NJJohn, not all Canadians are rooting for Vancouver. I'm a Ranger fan in Ottawa rooting for the Bruins, an Original Six team. Bobby Orr's still my all-time favorite hockey player, and it'd be nice to have the Stanley Cup back in the Hub of Hockey. I think Vancouver's dirty play (the Burrows bite, Rome's illegal hit) has galvanized the B's. I believe Boston wins in 6 games. Heck, with a couple of bounces, the B's could have swept the Canucks.

1:41 pm June 9, 2011

NJJohn wrote:

This will have all Canadians biting their fingers.

12:39 pm June 9, 2011

B's fan wrote:

Vancouver has been playing a dirty kind of hockey since game 1, not that I'm against some dirty hockey. They have been trying to tempt the Bruins into penalties, and I love the fact that it has backfired with the B's penalty kill including some short handed goals.

The refs need to step back and let a couple good brawls happen...I think when McQuaid buries one of the Sideen's Vancouver will think twice about their current game plan.

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